Ops dept.
The problem with a good Ops dept. (and we have a great one) is that one forgets how to do it oneself! Any competent and experienced European pilot should be able to do it himself but it is getting more and more complicated and frustrating and I wonder if it is condusive to flight safety to ask the crew to do it. (negotiating slots ATC delays, reroutes, late passengers). As I said the problem is when the ops dept are down on staff and suddenly say "could you do all that yourself today please"! Good ops staff are hard to come by and if you get some good ones treat them nicely.
We have a policy here that we recruit 200 hour frozen ATPL's and the deal is that they have to work in the ops dept for 12 months then they go on a type rating course and then work 1/2 ops 1/2 co-pilot for a further 12 months. That way we give the youngsters a kick start to their carreer and we get the "pilot input" to our ops dept. It works really well and we have 4 pilots on staff who have done this route, including the chief pilot! The other bonus is that these guys rarely slag the ops dept for the occassional mistake......they have been there themselves!